Nance at the Wheel

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

Jim Nance of Packard made only a few mistakes in his time with Studebaker and Packard, but they were whoppers. A couple were honest mistakes caused, perhaps, by exercising too much caution. However, to my thinking, his biggest error was so grievous that even 60 years later, I still can't forgive him.
Nance, who'd been a crack marketing executive with GE's Hotpoint Appliance division, became president of the Packard Motor Car Company in May 1952. Packard's board of directors brought him in hoping to inject some new life into the old luxury car firm. Over the years Packard had become complacent, lacking the spark needed to compete in what was becoming a tough business. For a few years after the war, a seller's market had kept Packard in the pink, but now competition was heating up, and the board wanted someone with tremendous drive and ambition to take the wheel. If Nance was anything, he was ambitious.
With his vast marketing experience, it didn't take Nance long to figure out that Packard had cheapened its name by applying it to lower-priced models. Even when the all-new 1951 models debuted, the base 200 models bore the time-honored Packard name--giving owners the same cachet as buyers of the high-priced 400 series cars, much to the annoyance of customers who paid significantly more for the top-line models. Over the years, luxury car buyers had begun migrating to Cadillac. By the 1950s, the majority of Packards being sold were the low-buck models; cheaper cars trading on an illustrious name.
Although Nance arrived too late to change the 1952 models, he moved quickly to begin separating the lower-priced models from the prestige jobs. For 1953, the Clipper name was brought back to designate the lower models in the Packard range. In print, Packard even used different color ink and different size fonts to emphasize the difference in the two lines. But Nance's mistake was to continue using the Packard name on the Clipper models. In my opinion, he should either have designated the lower-priced car only as a Clipper or (assuming he was afraid of a backlash from customers and dealers) as a Clipper by Packard. Either way would have provided much more brand separation. But Nance took the cautious route. That, I believe, was a mistake, but it's one that another man in the same position might have made. After all, there was no way Nance could have known how quickly the market was going to turn against the independent makes. As it was, the poop hit the fan during the third quarter of 1953.
Another serious error Nance made was to hold off redesigning the Packard until 1955. That meant Packard had to keep the same basic look for four model years--1951 to 1954. For the first three it worked out OK, but in 1954, when the Ford-Chevy sales war was murdering the independents, a redesigned Packard would have helped stem the tide. Instead, Packard got creamed.
For 1955, Nance made a big mistake when he authorized moving Packard final assembly to the Connor Avenue body plant. The results were poor quality, low productivity, high expenses involved in moving equipment and tools out of East Grand Boulevard factory--and lost profits. To make matters worse, Nance chose this same time to introduce a new V-8 engine and revised transmission, both of which had teething problems. And if that wasn't enough, Nance also scheduled a complete restyling of the Packard and Clipper, vitally needed since he hadn't done it for 1954.
All of this caused absolute chaos in the Packard factory, disgust among owners, and depression among Packard's dealers and loyalists. The manufacturing, product design, and engineering departments were simply overwhelmed.
The Clipper series finally became a separate make for 1956, but by then it was too late to do Packard any good. However, in fairness to Nance, I'll bet his dealers fought the change, because the Clippers were their best sellers, and taking off the Packard name made selling them more difficult.
But Nance's biggest mistake was his failure to find the right partner to merge with. He chose Studebaker because it had good sales volume, and competed in segments below Packard's. Unfortunately, Studebaker was losing money a lot faster than anyone knew. It ended up draining the life out of Packard.
Nash-Kelvinator would have been a much better partner, because the two makes could immediately begin sharing a common body shell, which would have resulted in enormous cost savings for both. Nash had a modern, expansive body plant, so Packard wouldn't have needed to do the Connor Avenue thing at all. Clippers could have been built in Kenosha, Wisconsin, while Packards could be built in the Grand Boulevard plant. Certainly, Packard dealers would have had access to the Rambler line, giving them a low-priced and well-known volume car. Nash could have used the Packard V-8 while the Ambassador Six might have been offered in Packard's export models. As it was, Studebaker and Packard didn't get around to sharing a common body shell until the ill-advised 1957 models. The less said about those sad misfits the better.
The worst part about all this is that Nash submitted a merger proposal to Packard, but it was rejected after it was learned that Nash CEO George Mason would head the combine, leaving Nance the expectation of being only a vice president/general manager of the Packard Division. Executives close to Nance said he wasn't interested in any merger in which he couldn't be top dog.
And that's why I find Nance's biggest mistake--the rejection of a merger with Nash--so unforgivable: because I believe it was done out of ego. And the result was the demise of Packard.
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This article originally appeared in the April, 2007 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.